Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Issue
3, as the proposed amendment is known, is bankrolled by wealthy
investors spending nearly $25 million to put it on the ballot and sell
it to voters. If it passes, they will have exclusive rights to growing
commercial marijuana in Ohio. The proposal has a strange bedfellows
coalition of opponents: law enforcement officers worried about crime,
doctors worried about children's health, state lawmakers and others
who warn that it would enshrine a monopoly in the Ohio
Constitution. [bold added]

To their credit, many
otherwise pro-legalization Ohioans are going to vote against this
initiative. That said, much of the opposition is unprincipled,
motivated by a vague suspicion of "big business" and popular myths
about capitalism. I will take the opportunity this fact affords me to
point out that government-granted monopolies are
not capitalism, as
Ayn Rand once argued:

A "coercive monopoly" is a business
concern that can set its prices and production policies independent of
the market, with immunity from competition, from the law of supply and
demand. An economy dominated by such monopolies would be rigid and
stagnant.

The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly
is closed entry -- the barring of all competing producers from a given
field. This can be accomplished only by an act of government
intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies, or
franchises. Without government assistance, it is impossible for a
would-be monopolist to set and maintain his prices and production
policies independent of the rest of the economy. For if he attempted
to set his prices and production at a level that would yield profits
to new entrants significantly above those available in other fields,
competitors would be sure to invade his industry. [bold
added]

The coupling of the grant of a monopoly is
inconsistent in principle and in practice with the legalization of
marijuana since it represents the mere granting of a permission
by the government (that it has no business being in a position to
grant), rather than a recognition of having been in the wrong, and a
promise to protect the freedom it is supposed to protect. For just one
concrete example, consider the threat of very easy regulation,
taxation, and even revocation that the monopolist represents here. One
grower, already meekly in the lap of the government, has but one neck
to lead, throttle, or chop once a government hostile to the freedom to
decide what one ingests comes to power.

While it is
possible that such limited legalization could help erode the ignorance
and prejudice that help keep drug laws on the books, the price is too
great. That price is that an opportunity to advocate actual freedom
might be lost, and with it, the chance to improve many more aspects of
our lives by moving our laws generally to support individual
rights.

If we are again to have a nation of laws, and not
men, we must have laws that apply to everyone generally, rather than
granting special favors to one faction or another. Advocates of
legalized marijuana would do well to join advocates of individual
rights, such as myself, in demanding that drug legalization be done on
the correct basis.